


I Don't Like Mirrors

by wonderlandiscrumbling



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Hallucinations, M/M, Mental Illness, Paranoia, Trans Male Character, alternate route for season three, fears, season three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 12:31:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18366068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderlandiscrumbling/pseuds/wonderlandiscrumbling
Summary: There's something about mirrors in dark rooms that fills Ed with dread, perhaps it's because more often than not his reflection tends to behave in a way that is abnormal to the ways a reflection should behave.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is mildly based on my own issues with mirrors one part as a trans guy who has a love/hate relationship with his reflection and also as somebody who genuinely gets very freaked out when there are mirrors in a room I'm sleeping in at night.

There’s a mirror in the room. A large mirror that sits atop a vanity table, its antique, the wood dark and shining. The piece, the table as a whole is beautiful, but it’s the mirror that gets to him. During the day when the sun shines through the double doors that lead out onto a balcony they often go out onto through the day to chat and smoke, when natural and man made light keeps the Victorian styled master bedroom well lit the mirror doesn’t bother him. He occasionally glances towards it when he’s sitting on the foot of the bed watching as Oswald gets dressed for the day, verbally making dinner plans and plans for meetings. He sees himself in the mirror, just himself as he is, his reflection moving in time with himself as it should. It calms him when it’s daytime and the mirror behaves the way that it should. Often Oswald sits at the vanity, occasionally he will wear foundation and concealer to hide his freckles, to obscure the occasional bout of acne. Sometimes he feels comfortable enough to wear eyeliner and other assortments of makeups, but most times not.

The vanity, the decorative mirror atop the table are fine during the day, just a fitting fixture in a ridiculously large bedroom that is held within a haunting looking mansion they consider home.

It’s during the night though that the mirror bothers him. When they’re both awake he can ignore it for the most part. Limited light coming through the window, the lamps on the stands that set on either side of the king-sized bed illuminating just enough light for them to do their nightly routines. Some nights Oswald sits at the vanity and looks at himself, grows frustrated with his acne, somedays he avoids the mirror just as much as Ed does. There are days where Oswald is prone to avoiding every reflective surface in the manor, but for a reason very different than Ed’s. At night when Oswald is near the mirror his reflection behaves as all reflections should behave, but if Ed catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror at the same time it isn’t right. His reflection never behaves as it should, while both Oswald and his reflection rant about arrogant crooks and racist politicians, Ed’s reflection just stares unblinking and emotionless even if Ed himself is nodding and responding occasionally to his boyfriend’s rantings.

He can pretend this isn’t odd or terrifying when they’re both awake. If he can avoid looking at the mirror then he does, but he can swear he feels his reflection staring at him, watching him. When they have sex more often than not he feels eyes burning into him, watching him. He pretends that he doesn’t have this paranoid fear burning in his brain, focuses on the feeling of warm familiar flesh and whispered words of desire and need. If they’re together, wrapped in each other, if he’s pressed against the mattress with Oswald on top of him, sweaty body pressed against him and teeth grazing his neck then he can easily forget there’s something watching. He can forget the man in the mirror, his reflection that does not behave the way a reflection should behave. 

It’s only after the moment has passed, when heart beats slow down to normal rates and they have caught their breaths. It’s only when Oswald is curled up against his side sleeping, the room encased in darkness that Ed feels it again. His eyes drift to the vanity, to the mirror’s reflective surface and his heart beat quickens. He feels his throat constrict, he thinks of the Ring and the dead girl crawling out of the TV with her contorted rotting body and thirst for revenge and flesh. He swallows hard and closes his eyes, he counts to ten, prays to God even though that has never worked out well for him. He opens his eyes and there in the mirror is his reflection. He’s staring, smiling, dressed in his green and black suit. His smile is wrong, it’s mocking and cruel. The way he stares fills him with dread, even when he doesn’t speak Ed can guess what he’s thinking.

He closes his eyes again. He thinks back to when he was nine the first time his reflection didn’t behave the way reflections should behave. Thinks of the voice in his head, how it told him not to let Tony treat him that way. At school the next day that voice had been so incredibly loud, it had felt almost like being controlled, watching incompacitated as something controlled his body, made him pick up that rock in the playground, go up to Tony and smash it over his head.

He opens his eyes again, there’s nothing there. He looks next to him and Oswald is sleeping, his eyelids twitch, mouth opens and closes, a second later he kicks his good leg and his foot connects with Ed’s shin. He’s accustomed to this, he learned months ago that his partner is a rather active sleeper except for the times he’s too drunk to even make it to the bed without Ed carrying him. 

Ed’s careful as he climbs out of bed, he’s slow and paranoid as he slowly places his feet on the wooden surface of the floor. A ridiculous childhood fear of his warns that a monster will wrap its clawed fingers around his ankle and pull him under to never be seen again, he thinks of Howie Mandel in that ridiculous movie as a blue monster who shows a boy the land of monsters beneath his bed. He can’t help but chuckle to himself as he thinks of that being the fate that awaits you if a monster pulls you under the bed. Yet there is no monster, no real ones, just the ones in his past, and in his head. The monsters who wear surgical masks and smocks inside Arkham asylum who tortured them both for months on end.

Slowly he walks across the bedroom, he keeps his eyes firmly fixed upon the doors of the walk-in closet. He doesn’t realize until he passes by the vanity that he’s been holding his breath, he breathes out then desperately breathes in again. He freezes in place as he feels something, something is watching him. He closes his eyes and counts again, but it doesn’t help. He opens his eyes and looks towards the mirror, he sees himself standing there before the foot of the bed, smiling. His reflection places his gloved index finger against his lips signaling to be quiet, Ed swallows hard and resist the urge to grab the chair and smash it into the mirror. It’s three in the morning and the last thing he wants to do is explain to Oswald why he just smashed a thousand-dollar vanity with a chair in the middle of the night. Instead he turns away and rushes to the closet.

He throws open the doors and reaches up to the top shelf. There are stacks of boxes and photo albums, between these sets of memories both pleasant and torturous is a pile of blankets, Ed grabs them down and shuts the closet doors. He returns to the vanity, he keeps his eyes cast downward as he unfolds one of the blankets then quickly tosses it over the mirror, he repeats this with the next two until there’s a three-layer coverage over the mirror. He steps back and sighs feeling eighty pounds of stress lift from his shoulders.

He dashes back to the bed and hops in, his partner completely undisturbed.


	2. Chapter 2

In the morning Ed is awoken by Oswald shaking his shoulder. He groans and stretches, bats his hand away, he grabs the pillow and places it over his head to block out the sunlight and to signal that he’d like at least another hour of sleep. Oswald grabs the pillow and tosses it onto the floor.

“What is it?” He mutters out as he opens his eyes, his vision is blurred, he squints to try and make out the figure of the man sitting next to him on the bed.

From what he can see his boyfriend is fully dressed, hair styled, and his cane is leaning against the side of the bed. Oswald retrieves his glasses from the nightstand and hands them to him, Ed mutters a ‘thank you’ as he puts them on.

“I was going to wait until you woke up to ask you, but it’s well past noon and I’m rather curious….Why did you throw blankets over my vanity?”

Ed tenses, he looks towards the vanity to see it is now uncovered, but there’s nothing else there. It’s just a vanity in a brightly lit bedroom, he looks back to Oswald who looks just the slightest bit worried. 

“Promise not to think I’m insane.”

He needs to know he isn’t going to judge him. He reminds himself that Oswald knows he has problems, he had to blackmail them to let them give him an early release from Arkham.

“Ed, I love you, I’m not going to think you’re insane.”

“I don’t like mirrors, especially at night. I um, sometimes when I look at them, I see myself, but it isn’t myself. That’s…. That’s how things started before and I think it might be happening again.” He confesses, he feels nervous and self-conscious sharing this piece of himself.

As he says it, he knows how insane it sounds, he realizes there’s no way he could have phrased it that would sound logical. He just prays the other man understands or at least will humor him.

“Are you okay with it being uncovered right now?”

He nods in response.

“But at night…”

“At night is when it feels wrong.”

Oswald’s quiet for a moment, the silence feels as if it drags on and he worries what it means until the other man speaks again. “Okay so when it starts getting dark out, I’ll be sure to cover the mirror up, I can have Olga cover the other mirrors up at night as well. Just a precaution.” He smiles softly, he pets his fingers through Ed’s messed curled hair, and there’s a sadness in his eyes. There’s a sadness that says he doesn’t fully understand this, but he’s not well either and neither was his father or his mother. 

Ed feels the need to apologize, but he isn’t sure for what. Instead he smiles in return and thanks him, he knows realistically it’s ridiculous, but this is important. 

When night comes around again, he no longer feels that gut wrenching fear that seizes him with terrible thoughts. The mirror is covered, there is no more discussion, there is no questioning. The mirrors are covered during the night because Ed needs them to be that way, they stay covered because Oswald on some level understands these things, and because he loves him dearly.


End file.
